Republicans Choice: Stay the Party of No on Key Issues Ahead?

My latest Capital Journal looks at some tricky curves just ahead for Republicans in Congress:

Being “the party of no” has worked out quite nicely for Republicans, but that position is about to undergo its own stress test.

By linking arms to oppose the recently passed health-care overhaul and the economic-stimulus package before that, Republicans have been rewarded with higher approval ratings and enhanced midterm-election prospects.

In fact, Sarah Palin last week declared that, rather than shrink from the party-of-no label that Democrats have slapped on them, Republicans should wear it as a badge of honor: “We’re the party of hell no,” she declared to a gathering of Southern Republicans, who roared their agreement.

But just ahead on the road to the 2010 midterm elections lie three big issues—financial regulatory reform, a Supreme Court pick and an arms-reduction treaty—where it’s much less clear that presenting a solid wall of opposition to President Barack Obama and his Democrats makes similarly good political sense. The risk for Republicans is that the image they have cultivated as a party taking principled stands can morph—or, more precisely, be morphed by Democrats—into an image of a party of obstructionists.

“The people who still decide elections in this country expect progress and don’t expect obstruction,” says Jim Jordan, a leading Democratic strategist. “This sort of monolithic obstruction to everything just doesn’t work with swing voters.”

Republicans insist they can avoid that trap. “It depends how it’s defined,” says Republican strategist Frank Luntz. He wrote a memo in January to Republican leaders on the language to use in opposing Democratic bills rewriting the rules of Wall Street regulation that has gone a long way toward framing the party’s public posture.